Chimaeron Healer Strategy Guide (Heroic Mode included)

This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the
encounter with Chimaeron in Blackwing Descent. It is mostly targeted to healers
who desire to have a short but detailed overview of what is expected of
them during that fight.

This guide is updated for World of Warcraft WoD 6.1.2.

As healer, this encounter will be seriously test your abilities. Whether
you are raid-healing or tank-healing, any mistake or loss of attention will
most likely cause a wipe.

The fight consists of two alternating phases (Spread Phase and Stack Phase)
followed by a third phase (Nuke Phase).

For most of the encounter, you should remain spread out (Spread Phase) and a
friendly mechanical unit (activated by talking to the friendly NPC behind the
boss, prior to starting the fight) will prevent anyone over 10,000 health
points from dying. A few times, the protection provided by this mechanical unit
will be temporarily disabled (for slightly less than 30 seconds) by one of
Chimaeron's abilities. During such occurrences (stack phase), you should
stack at a designated place to soak heavy AoE damage from the boss. When
Chimaeron's health reaches between 22% and 20%, he will become immune to taunt,
take 10% extra damage, and reduce healing to the raid by 99%. This is the nuke
phase, during which you must solely focus on attacking the boss because healing
is reduced by 99%.

It is important that, as a healer, you have a basic understanding of the
various abilities from Chimaeron that are going to affect your play style
during the fight.

2.1. Abilities

Finkle Einhorn needs to be talked to prior to starting the fight so as
to enable the Bile-O-Tron 800. This mechanical unit, or bot, provides a buff
called Finkle's Mixture. It prevents raid members from dying when they are
over 10,000 health and take a hit that would kill them. Instead, their health
is reduced to 1.

Chimaeron has a melee attack named Swing that deals about 135k damage to
the current tank. He does it every 4 to 5 seconds.

Double Attack is a buff
that causes Chimaeron to strike the main aggro target twice on his next attack.
The two strikes happen in a time window of 0.2 to 0.4 seconds. It is triggered
by the swing that applies Break
and applies to the next swing. This means that you will be warned 4 to 5
seconds in advance that Double Attack is coming.

Massacre is an attack that
would kill everyone if it were not for the protection provided by the
Bile-O-Tron 800. Thanks to that protection, this attack only leaves everyone at
1 health. It has a 4 second cast and a 30 second cooldown. If a melee attack is
scheduled to take place during Massacre cast, it will not happen, and if Double
Attack is up at such a time, it can be safely ignored.

Caustic Slime deals AoE Nature damage to everyone within six yards of the
randomly targeted raid member. In 10-man,
the number of raid members simultaneously targeted by this ability is 2, while in
25-man, it is 4.

In order to clarify how these abilities are mixed together, the following
figure shows you a possible scenario (taken from the data of a real fight).

Here, we chose to display on two different rows the melee attacks (and their
related debuffs) and the spells (Massacre and Caustic Slime).

Throughout the phase, Chimaeron does melee attacks at regular intervals.
Every 3 attacks (4 exceptionally), a new stack of his Break debuff is applied on his current
target and he prepares to strike twice next. In addition, every 30 seconds
he will cast Massacre. He will always start casting Massacre after he did
2 volleys of Caustic Slime. Usually after the second or third Massacre,
the Stack Phase will start.

2.2. Strategy

As a healer, you should always be spread out as you are a potential
target for Caustic Slime.

Whether you are healing the raid or the tanks, your main goal during the
Spread Phase is to keep people over 10,000 health, because of
Finkle's Mixture. If you heal people too
much over 10,000 health, you are wasting your heals and your mana. Only
the off-tank needs to be topped off from time to time.

The raid only takes damage from Massacre and Caustic Slime.
As you can see in the figure
above, It means that there are periodic time windows of 15 seconds when the
raid will not take any damage.

The main tank only takes damage from Chimaeron's melee attacks
(that come with a 4 to 5 second interval) and Massacre.

The off-tank is the main concern. In addition to taking damage
from Massacre and Caustic Slime, the off-tank has to handle Double Attack.
Before these two successive melee attacks strike, the off-tank needs to be
topped off. Why? Because the attacks come in such quick succession that you
cannot heal the tank between them. The only way for the off-tank to survive
is to remain over 10,000 health after the first attack (which requires him to
be topped off). Then, the second attack will not kill him, but simply leave him
at 1 health. The main tank cannot handle Double Attack because he gets a
stacking debuff from Chimaeron that does not allow him to remain over 10,000
health after the first attack.

2.3. Tips and Tricks

A Holy Paladin's Beacon of Light on the main tank is extremely useful
since it will keep him over 10,000 health without any direct attention for the
entire duration of the fight.

Sometimes, people get targeted twice in a row by caustic slime and it is
IMPERATIVE to get everyone over 10,000 health before the next caustic slime
even if this means using a fast and inefficient heal (like Flash Heal or
Flash of Light) - though it should mostly be done through instant casts
when possible.

Sometimes, Massacre will knock the Bile-O-Tron 800 offline which disables
Finkle's Mixture. When that happens, Chimaeron enters a state called Feud,
which lasts the entire Stack Phase (about 30 seconds) and during which his two
heads are arguing. This prevents him from doing melee attacks. However, he will
still cast Caustic Slime.

Without Finkle's Mixture, Caustic Slime will one-shot any player
targeted by it. Fortunately, the Nature damage this ability deals is spread
evenly among the players within 6 yards of the target. So the entire raid should
stack in one place in order to soak the damage and help the healers keep
everyone alive.

As a healer, your first priority in that phase is to stack with everyone
else. The first volleys of Caustic Slime happen 15 seconds after the Massacre
that started the Stack Phase. That leaves you some time to stack and use AoE
heals to get everyone's health as high as you can.

The 2 volleys of Caustic Slime that come at 15 and 22 seconds
into the Stack Phase must be dealt with through the heavy use of AoE healing.
After the last volley, you have 7 to 8 seconds to get everyone back over 10,000.
This is necessary to survive the Massacre that ends the Stack Phase. The
Bile-O-Tron 800, will be back online when Massacre hits.

When Chimaeron's health reaches between 22% and 20%, he will go into rage
and become taunt immune. He will also reduce healing done by 99% which means
that all you can do is try to do as much damage to him as you possibly can.

Chimaeron will kill raid members one by one in decreasing aggro order. As
a healer, you need to try and maintain a high threat so that you die as early
as possible in order to give the DPS more time to burn the boss.

When Chimaeron attacks a DPS Caster, if you are a Holy Paladin, then you can
use Hand of Protection to make them immune to Chimaeron attacks without
preventing them from casting.

If you are a Paladin, you can cast Hand of Salvation on DPS classes
that cannot lower their threat, Warriors and Balance Druids for instance.

If you are a Holy Paladin, if you are being targeted, and if the next aggro
target is also a healer, then you can use Divine Shield. Chimaeron will
run to you, then go to that other healer when you cast Divine Shield, and
come back to you after he has killed that other healer and your Divine Shield
has worn off.

The fight is extremely similar to its normal mode counterpart. As a healer,
you will want to know that during the Stack Phase, Chimaeron will continue
to attack the tank. It means that the off-tank will have to survive
Double Attack without the help of the Bile-O-Tron 800. Tanking
and healing cooldowns will be required.

Due to that change, some DPS players with the ability to taunt and keep aggro
on the boss will tank the boss during the Spread Phase to enable another,
dedicated tank to take Chimaeron during the Stack Phase and survive this
phase despite building up stacks of Break when the Bile-O-Tron 800 is inactive.
You need to be aware of who will take the boss at a given point and heal people
accordingly.

Power Word: Shield is almost required for getting a kill since it is the
only way to counter Mocking Shadows, a debuff applied on every raid member
by Nefarian upon entering the Nuke Phase. In case your raid has several
Discipline Priests, whoever makes the biggest shields will be chosen for
shielding the raid.